With an origin story that can be traced back to 1908, a time before hashtags and a little thing called the vote, International Women’s Day on March 8 is nothing new. But wow, has it been re-energized: Since the Women's March shook the world in 2017, we've seen all-out resistance against bad, boorish behavior—the kind that's been going on for way too long—with the rise of both #MeToo and Time’s Up. We no longer shush those urgent (and long overdue) questions about power structures, equal pay, and even our own complicity when it comes to sexual assault and harassment in the workplace, which takes place everywhere from Hollywood to the Batali world to the hotel industry.

Paying attention to what women have to say—listening to what we have to say—has been one of the biggest social movements of the past year, and since our first-annual Women Who Travel package launched last International Women’s Day, our team has continued to give female travelers a platform to share their stories. Our Women Who Travel Facebook group (now some 50,000 members strong!) has evolved into a space for self-identifying women to exchange travel tips, ask questions, give advice on everything from finding cheap flights to their favorite taco spots in Mexico City, and to ultimately form a community. It also inspired us to start a podcast, which over the course of eight episodes has looked at everything from the realities of solo travel to the travel industry's #sowhite problem—check back March 12 for the return of season two.

And so, this International Women’s Day, we’re continuing to celebrate all those women who refuse to stay home. Who want to erase the borders that confine us. To honor the occasion, we've asked nine bold women for their travel stories, big and small, that made them who they are today: Ava DuVernay, director of the highly anticipated adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, tells us how travel is like a prayer for her; Malaysian pop star Yuna says she travels to prove herself wrong; Olympian Ibtihaj Muhammed (pictured above in Dubai) believes that fencing is a universal language; and according to country-hopping travel host Samantha Brown, travel is all about the commas, not the exclamation marks. But no matter how far these women have journeyed, the message is the same: We explore the world to learn something new—about others, about ourselves.

We also have stories on the pilots breaking the glass ceiling at 35,000 feet, the free divers who descend to the bottom of the ocean (and who are now working to save it), and much more. A big thank you to all the Traveler women who contributed to this package—we hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as we did listening to them.